While manning a family history help desk I was talking to 2 people who were total beginners but had brought some family information with them namely a couple of certificates.
As I was explaining what information, very useful information was included in certificates I was also sketching out a rough, very rough, family tree based on the info given on the certificates. My sketching, without a ruler was not good and it was hard for them to follow as from the census we had found a child with grandparents - so a generation was missing. This made it even harder.
How could I make it easier to explain and more importantly make it easier for beginners to understand. Well, not always beginners as sometimes even more experienced family historians need to draw a tree to understand who goes where and how they all fit it.
Paper came out along with pencils and a vry big rubber, oh and don't forget a non-dogearred ruler ! The first few attempts I kept missing out a generation on one side - silly me ! Time to concentrate. Eventually I had a good enough prototype to take to my better half and say draw that for me on the computer.
Less than 24 hours later I have a workable mainline with siblings tree and uploaded it to the charts and forms section of my site.
Now it should be easier to follow generations and add siblings as children of siblings are also family members - there's not a lot of space for dates and if you run out of space for siblings, start another sheet, with a ref no. that way you know who fits into the great scheme of things.
Back to the transcribing, I've lots of things in the pipeline and I've been working on a war memorial for a church in Whitby. Not only did the church include those who died but also those who fought, which is very interesting but sad when you see brothers who went away and not all came home. That will be uploaded soon.
Now the nights are drawing in I will, I promise, transcribe a great deal over the winter and add lots for you to peruse.
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